


a little dab'll do ya

by deniigiq



Series: Into the Multiverse [14]
Category: Spider-Gwen (Comics), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Spider-Woman (Comic)
Genre: Earth-65, Elektra is DD in this, Friendship, Gen, Pokemon References, Sam is the chaos element, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, adventures in babysitting, give gwen some FRIENDS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 15:21:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “No, I’m a Sam. I am an expert on Sams. This is not a Sam,” Falcon said, edging away from Sammy’s paper shaking.“He’s just as much of a Sam as you are,” Gwen scolded.“He is obviously half as much of a Sam as I am,” Falcon scowled down at Sammy’s now forlorn puppy eyes.(Gwen sets out to make some friends in her own universe for once. She finds herself drowning in a sea of Sams.)





	a little dab'll do ya

**Author's Note:**

> I will post twice in one weekend and no ONE CAN STOP ME  
seriously I'm rolling around in jealousy because my students get reading week and I get a week to grade their papers. 
> 
> Just as a note, I'm not as into the Spiderwoman comics and so don't have as much basis for the canon, so if some of these characterizations are wildly off base, my bad. Please come on this brazenly AU journey with me anyways 👍. 
> 
> For reference, Spider-Gwen's Captain America is Samantha Wilson and Sam-13 (Falcon) is a teenage male clone of her. Bitsy is, as usual, Miles from the Inimitable Verse.

Gwen decided that what she really wanted was superhero friends.

Like, she _had_ superhero friends in the form of the other Spiderpeople, and now she had DD whenever she was in town, but DD was older and always rushing around with no time for just sitting down and hanging out. And Miles and Blondie were doing something together that was very hush-hush-secrets-secrets and Peter B. had his own Miles who he was running around getting into trouble with and the point here was that Gwen had no Miles or Peter or Matt Murdock or Deadpool or anyone really to go out and just be a person with.

Gwen missed having friends.

She missed her own Peter. She missed her bandmates, even if they were always fighting.

“Gengar.”

She looked up from her brooding to see Sammy holding the phone that Elektra had given him in her face.

“Very nice,” she said. “Super purple.”

Sam took a while to process this, then decided that he’d accept it and went back to his Pokémon app thing.

Gwen watched him.

“Sammy,” she said, “Are you lonely?”

Sam turned back at the sound of her voice and waited for the question to be repeated.

Elektra was out. Elektra was busy. Elektra had been going head to head (or perhaps more accurately, blade to blade) with Murderdock over something neither of them would say out loud for the last two days. Whatever it was, Elektra had decided that it was above Sammy’s paygrade and so had ever-so-sweetly asked Gwen if she was busy on her Friday night.

Gwen wished she could have said that she was.

Now she was babysitting.

“Alone?” Sam repeated back to her.

“Lonely,” Gwen clarified for him. “No one else is around. You feel sad.”

Sam studied her and then held up his phone.

“I am not sad. Gengar,” he told her.

Right. Of course. Sam was six and a problem-solver. If he was lonely, he could just go online and immerse himself in Pokémon until he forgot about it. And when he didn’t have that, he had his training with Elektra to keep him busy. And when he didn’t have _that_, he had about sixteen thousand different language games that he played to help him learn English.

Sam may have been lonely, but he sure wasn’t feeling it.

“Maybe you’re right,” Gwen told him. “Maybe the answer is to keep busy.”

“Keep busy,” Sam told her sagely. He came back over to show her a new purple thing on his phone. “Haunter.”

“Still very nice. Still very purple,” Gwen observed.

She looked at the clock on her phone.

She had four more hours of this.

She could not spend four hours looking at Pokémon with Sammy.

Just.

No.

“Hey,” she said, sitting up. “You wanna go on an adventure, Sammy?”

Sam snapped his face to her. He knew the word ‘adventure.’ He’d learned it from _Up_. He _loved_ _Up_.

“Go get your suit,” Gwen told him. “We’re going on an adventure.”

“He’s nothing like our Sam,” Bitsy told her reliably a little while later. “Our Sam’s really into plants.”

Gwen didn’t know what that meant. Like, breeding them or?

“No, no. Just plants. If you leave him alone, he does shit like research ferns.”

Dude.

She watched Sam lean over the edge of the roof with his _oni_ mask pulled up onto the top of his head. He made thinking noises at the ground, then ducked back to find a leaf to drop over the side.

“Does he like Pokémon?” she asked.

Bitsy gave her an eyebrow.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But he likes magnets.”

Who even was Big Red’s Sam? He sounded like a mega nerd.

“He’s pretty nerdy. He and Spidey go in circles about weird stuff for hours,” Bitsy explained. “They’ve got the same brain disease. Last week it was poison dart frogs, this week they’ve been sending each other lava videos on the chat. It’s like the weirdest ASMR shit ever. And they comment on it like ‘yo’ with nothing else.”

Gwen put a hand over her face to try to parse that.

“Okay,” she said slowly, “Is that how you make friends with superpeople?”

Bitsy was a good version of Miles. He was a little more mature than Itsy Miles. He seemed to know the real question Gwen was asking here.

“No,” he said, “You make superpeople friends by just tagging along on some superpeople nonsense a few times and then they just kinda adopt you into their group. It’s not that hard, especially not for us since we’re kids. It helps to have a similar brain disease, though. Like, Sam and Spidey obviously live in the same corner of Youtube, and the Thor and Captain America here in this verse have one fused, blond braincell or something between them. I started hanging out with them a bit and now me and Cap do art things together sometimes. You just gotta find a common interest.”

Common interest, right. That made sense.

Sammy came over to Gwen with a handful of dirty leaves he’d collected. He shoved that to her, then tugged at her arm until she got up and went to go drop them over the side of the building for him.

Bitsy stood up and followed.

“I don’t know a lot of superheroes in my verse,” Gwen admitted.

Bitsy caught Sammy under the arms and pulled him back a little further from the edge. Sam spun around and stared up at him like he’d slapped him.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to find them,” Bitsy said. “Either there or somewhere else.”

Gwen distracted Sam by throwing a whole handful of leaves over the side of the roof. She crouched down, scooped up another handful and threw them. Sam watched her do it and then mimicked the action.

“Down,” he said, watching them.

“Maybe you’re right,” Gwen said. “It just sucks.”

Bitsy was smiling at her, she could tell.

“Start with Cap,” he said. “They all congregate around him.”

“Yeah, I mean—wait. Him?” Gwen said. She grabbed Sam before he leaned too far over the roof again and set him on her shoulders. He seemed very pleased with that indeed.

Bitsy cocked his head at her.

“Yeah,” he said. “Him. You know. Big blond guy? The mortal enemy of self-checkout machines?”

Mmmmm.

Right.

Different verse, Gwen told herself.

“Cap,” Sam said down at her. He had both her and Bitsy’s attention now.

“You know Cap?” Gwen asked.

“I know Cap,” Sam told her firmly.

“That’s very helpful,” Gwen said. “Can we say more?”

Sam said more in Japanese.

“That’s _so_ helpful,” Gwen encouraged. “Can we say it in English?”

No. No, we cannot. Sam hugged the top of her head.

Gwen gave Bitsy a flat look which he snickered at.

“Maybe,” he said, “You ought to follow Sammy here. It seems like he knows more superfolks than you do.”

Dude.

Gwen took Sam off her shoulders and held him at eye-level. He seemed into that. He smiled at her and put his own hands on her shoulders to mimic her.

“Okay,” Gwen said. “We can do this.”

She went back to her verse and set Sam down on his own two feet in an alley in Hell’s Kitchen. His teacher was no doubt beating the shit out of someone nearby. Gwen knew because Sammy perked up and started twisting around, listening hard.

“No,” she told him. “We’re not looking for sensei. What are we looking for?”

Sam met her eyes and puffed himself up.

“Cap!” he said.

“That’s right,” Gwen told him. “Let’s find Cap! And not get arrested this time.”

“Finding Cap!”

How hard could it be, right?

Sam grabbed her hand and pulled.

“Cap!”

Gwen stared at poster in the comic book store’s window. Then looked back down at Sam. He pointed resolutely.

“This is Cap,” he told her again.

“That’s Cap alright,” she agreed. “But not the one we’re looking for. Real-people Cap, Sammy. We’re looking for _alive_ Cap, yeah?”

Sammy stared at her long and hard. Then brightened.

“Yeah!”

“Okay, great,” Gwen said. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go!”

“Cap!”

Maybe this was Gwen’s fault.

“This is Cap!”

Sam’s strong point was fighting people three times his size. Not English.

Or tracking.

Or remembering things, really. He could forget a slight to his pride in record time by the application of a snickers bar.

“That’s not Cap,” Gwen told him as patiently as she could. “That’s a picture of Cap. We’re looking for _Cap_, Sammy. Alive. Big, breathing. Tall. Like—”

“Baby Devil?”

Oh shit.

That was Cap.

The woman herself stood outside this late night café in a huge leather jacket. She’d topped her outfit off with a beanie and looked more like a regular person than Gwen was comfortable with in the wake of the whole Lizard thing.

Gwen slipped back before she even meant to.

“What’re you doing out here in the cold, BD?” Cap asked. “Where’s that mama of yours?”

Elektra? Knew?? Cap??

Sam rushed forward to Cap all excited and she wrapped him up in her coat. She flicked her eyes up at Gwen and Gwen snapped up as tall and straight as she could.

“Spiderwoman?”

Oh god. Oh, no. Gwen hadn’t planned this far ahead. They weren’t supposed to meet this directly, either. Gwen had just wanted to observe from afar.

“M-Ma’am?” Gwen creaked.

“Is he with you?” Cap asked, stooping down, picking Sam up, and setting him on her hip, so that she could get more coat around him. He hated being picked up like that when Gwen did it. And when Elektra did it. _And_ when Mr. Nelson did it.

Gwen wondered if they all shouldn’t start using Sammy’s tolerance for being held as a litmus test for someone’s trustworthiness.

“Yes, ma’am,” Gwen said stiffly.

“Huh,” Cap huffed. She looked at Sam in her arms. “Huh,” she said again.

Sam mumbled to her in Japanese.

“Oh, I see,” she said.

She definitely did not.

Well, it was good to know Gwen wasn’t the only one.

“You guys out for a stroll then? Might be easier out of the suit,” Cap said. She made no aggressive moves of the ‘going to arrest you and drag you to SHIELD’ variety.

“Yes, ma’am,” Gwen said. “We were actually just going back to the train, ma’am.”

Cap chuffed.

“Were you, now?” she said.

Fuck this. Gwen would just go out and make normal people friends. The awkwardness and underlying threat of capture wasn’t worth it.

“Sorry, I’ll take him. I think it’s almost bedtime, right, Sammy?” Gwen asked, holding out her hands. Sam glared at her and dug his fingers into Captain America’s shirt under her coat.

No carrying. Right. How could Gwen have forgotten?

Only Cap was allowed to do that, apparently.

Mother_fucker._

Gwen sent meaningful ‘come here’ Spidey sense pulses Sam’s way in full knowledge that they would not penetrate his stubborn six-year-old skull. Sam mugged at her harder as though they did.

“_Right, Sam_?” Gwen asked again.

He hid in Cap’s neck.

Oooooh. You little—

Cap laughed and hiked him up more securely.

“It probably is bedtime,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, Spiderwoman, I’ll follow you back. He’s like his mama, you know. To get ‘em to do anything you’ve gotta drag ‘em kicking and screaming.”

How the fuck did Elektra know Cap?

Cap was SHIELD business. Not devil business. And certainly not Gwen-business.

“Really, it’s okay,” Gwen said. “I can handle him.”

How do you know Elektra, woman? Speak.

“It’s no trouble, I can’t sleep these days anyways. Where do you live, honey?”

Nowhere Gwen was saying out loud in a million years to the likes of _you_.

Actually, you know what?

Maybe this was why she didn’t have superhero friends. Maybe this was what Bitsy had been talking about. Maybe she just needed to tag along this time.

She could always lie halfway through and say she lived somewhere else. She could always lie now, couldn’t she?

Fuck.

Fine. This one time and this one time only.

“Queens, ma’am,” Gwen said. “And I’d appreciate it. DD will kill me if she finds out he’s out this way without her.”

Cap was good-natured and in a light mood. Not at all what Gwen had expected from her. She seemed so serious in the papers and on tv. Always so grave. She always seemed caught in a life or death situation.

But then here she was with Sammy, who eventually lost tolerance for being held, even from Cap herself, and demanded to be put down in every language that he knew and then a couple from countries he’d apparently skated through with Elektra.

He held Cap’s hand instead.

Cap tsked at him.

“DD really needs to get him a winter suit,” she told Gwen. “Or at least a coat.”

“Yeah,” Gwen said lamely.

“Even you’ve got one, don’t you?” Cap said. “I saw a clip on twitter the other day. Pink, right?”

Fuck you, Murderdock. This was why Gwen should never have accepted that coat. She was out running around looking like Valentine’s Day marshmallow in front of Captain America now.

“Yeah,” she forced herself to say. “Someone gave it to me.”

“It suits you,” Cap said.

Yeah, right.

“How do you know DD?” Gwen asked. “I just met her. She seems a little, uh—”

“Flighty? Slippery? Perpetually out of touch any time you need her not to be?”

Well, _she_ said it. Not Gwen.

Cap laughed.

“Met her a couple months back. Her mark was mixed in with mine. Had a grand ole chat about using children as bait.”

Cap stroked a hand over Sammy’s hair.

“That’s fair,” Gwen said. “But he is very good bait.”

“He’s amazing bait,” Cap agreed. “Too good, honestly. But that’s still child abuse. Anyways, we got to talking and her priorities align with mine, traded numbers and that’s history. She’s a good egg. Under all that rage.”

Rage? Gwen hadn’t seen any rage.

“Consider yourself lucky then. You come all the way out here from Queens every night? Man, that’s dedication.”

No, no. They weren’t talking about Gwen. She wasn’t ready yet.

“I want to work with her,” Gwen said.

Cap fell silent for a couple paces.

“Might not be the best idea, Spiderwoman,” she finally said. “DD’s involved with some pretty deep shit.”

“We have that in common,” Gwen said.

Cap stopped.

“How old are you?” she asked.

None of your fucking business, ma’am.

“Old enough,” Gwen said.

“You sound like a kid.”

You sound like a spy.

“You don’t have to do this, you know. There are—”

“You didn’t have to,” Gwen pointed out. “But you did.”

She breathed in cold air in the resulting silence. Sam looked between the two women above him, then leaned a cheek against Cap’s hand.

The look Cap gave Gwen traveled down her face to her shoes, then back up. It was quiet. It was thinking.

“How old are you, Spiderwoman?” she asked again.

“Why does it matter?” Gwen asked.

Cap pursed her lips. The corner of her mouth flickered, though. Once, then twice.

Dad wanted to know who this kid that Gwen kept babysitting was.

Gwen told him he didn’t want to know.

“For your heart, pops,” she told him. “Trust me on this one.”

His moustache twitched.

“Has he been kidnapped?” he asked.

Sam looked up from his phone and assessed Dad as he assessed everyone. He seemed to label him a non-threat and went back to his matching game.

“More like a baby devil,” Gwen said.

Dad flinched.

“I didn’t hear that,” he decided.

He got two steps into the hall before Gwen heard him shout ‘Fuck!’

Sammy charmed Dad the way he’d charmed Gwen and Mr. Nelson.

“_Haunter_,” He said very seriously, holding the phone two inches away from Dad’s face.

“He knows Captain America,” Gwen said. “I met her properly this time. She didn’t try to arrest me.”

“Haunterrrrr,” Sam insisted. Dad took the phone and moved it a reasonable foot away from his face and then agreed that the purple rock on the screen was very scary looking, yes, indeed.

“I don’t like it, Gwen,” he said her way when Sam was satisfied that this creature had been witnessed in its full capacity.

“Me either,” Gwen said. “She wants to meet again. I don’t think I’m gonna—can I help you?”

Sam shoved the phone into her hands.

It was buzzing.

The number was private.

She exchanged a look with Dad. He shrugged. She swiped up to answer the call.

“Hello?” she said.

There was a pause on the other side. Then, a little distant like he’d turned away from the phone, she heard Murderdock shout “God_damnit_!”

She almost laughed.

Dad stood in front of her so that Murderdock couldn’t see her, which was very sweet, though extremely misguided.

Murderdock’s eyebrow twitched in annoyance.

He wasn’t? Wearing? Shoes???

“Dude,” she said at his feet, “Doesn’t that hurt?”

His eyebrow twitched harder.

“Just give me the boy,” he said.

“I’m calling the police,” Dad said.

“Fucking _do it_,” Murderdock snapped at him. “It’d save me a lot of trouble.”

There was a pause.

“Why?” Gwen asked cautiously.

Murderdock’s lip twitched this time. His feet really did look kind of raw. Gwen wondered if he’d been tricked into running out in the street like that.

“No reason that concerns you,” he grated out. Then, over Dad’s shoulder, he barked, “Samuel.”

Sam perked right up. Murderdock gave him an order in Japanese.

Sam cocked his head and said something back and there was a moment following that in which Murderdock appeared to start vibrating with fury.

Dad took a step back and made Gwen take one with him.

“DD said she was the one who’d be coming to pick him up,” Gwen said, moving out from behind her father.

Murderdock just vibrated.

“Daredevil,” he eventually gritted out, “Is indisposed. Like an idiot.”

An…idiot?

“Is she hurt?” Gwen asked.

“Like an idiot,” Murderdock simply repeated.

There was another pause.

Sam ducked under Gwen’s arm and flattened himself against Murderdock’s front without any sense of self-preservation.

“Sick?” he asked.

“Who? Me or her?” Murderdock asked down at him.

“Sensei?”

“Ugh. Disgusting.”

Uh?

Gwen glanced at Dad. He didn’t know how to respond either.

“Where’s your coat?” Murderdock scowled at Sam.

Sam just cocked his head.

“Coat,” Murderdock repeated. Then in Japanese.

Sam shoved his hands into the bottom of Murderdock’s shirt and a glorious expression of alarm snapped across his face at the gesture. Apparently Sam’s little baby hands were cold.

Murderdock loomed over the kid.

“No. Touching,” he threatened. Then again in Japanese. Then again in another language. Sam blinked at him, truly fearless, and scrunched his fingers up against the skin under his hands.

Murderdock’s jaw jumped.

“Nevermind,” he said. “I’m leaving you. You’re spider food.”

He spun around and Sam yelped after him. He turned hurriedly back to Gwen, gave her a hasty hug, and then chased after Murderdock, leaving Gwen and Dad standing, dumbfounded in the doorway.

“Not great,” Dad noted.

Nope. Not at all.

Dad was trying to teach Sammy how to dial 9-1-1 when Gwen got home that Monday. She stared. Dad noticed her and told her to close the door.

She did. Then strutted forward.

“I didn’t agree to this,” she said.

“No, I did for you,” Dad said, standing up.

“_Dad_.”

“She came by asking.”

“_Dad_.”

“I’m not doing anything right now. You can go out and do Spider things. Me and Sam are going to learn how to say ‘Don’t touch me or I’ll scream.’”

“Dad. He’s a warrior-in-training. If he doesn’t like someone touching him, he’ll just dislocate their arm. I’ve seen him do it.”

Dad would not be moved.

Gwen groaned.

“I have things to do tonight,” she said.

“And you may do them,” Dad huffed. “No one is stopping you from doing them.”

“You’re trying to de-vigilante my ally’s baby vigilante. Do you know how that looks for me?”

He refused to see reason. Gwen threw up her hands.

“Fine,” she said. “You watch him. You guys can watch Blue’s Clues or something together. I’m going out.”

“Going out,” Sam told Dad.

“No, no. Us? We’re staying in. Gwen is going out,” Dad replied.

“Going out.”

“In,” Dad corrected.

Sam chased after Gwen on her way back to her room; he caught her sleeve and stared seriously up at her.

“I know,” she said.

Sam made an irritated sound.

“Trust me, I know,” she told him. “But that’s your teacher’s bad, not mine. I’m going out.”

“Cap calls?”

Oh, he was clever.

“Did you bug my phone?” she asked.

Sam didn’t answer. But Gwen wasn’t sure how else he knew that Cap had texted her asking for a meeting. She wondered if he’d given Cap her number sometime that weekend. Or if Cap had just taken it from his phone herself.

Any way around, she had a meeting to attend. And she wasn’t taking any munchkin ninja distractions with her.

“You stay with Dad,” she told him. “It’ll be good for you. You can watch tv instead of breaking wrists for once.”

Sam scowled.

“No tv,” he told her. “It is brain rot.”

Now that, that was entirely Murderdock coming through. And as much as she liked the idea of Murderdock and Elektra bickering over children’s tv, she had places to be.

“Brain rot is normal,” she said. “Go experiment with being normal. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even like it.”

Sam huffed. He pouted at her until the second she left the house.

Cap was waiting for her about fifteen minutes away wearing her big leather coat. This time, her hair was pulled back into a neat bun. She had her hands shoved in her pockets and a person beside her.

Gwen touched down in front of her.

“It’s even better in person,” Cap said of her coat.

Gwen crossed her arms and ignored the bait.

“I’m here,” she said. “What do you want?”

“No Sammy this time?”

“He’s still working on the jacket thing. What do you want?”

“Well, that’s something. Saw his mad uncle running around these parts the other day with no shoes and an honest to god metal pipe on his shoulder. No good’s coming of that, that’s for sure.”

Murderdock, what the fuck, man? You own shoes. Gwen had seen them. Multiple times even.

Unless Elektra was playing a sick game with him and all those shoes were no more. In which case, girl: that is not doing anything to convince the guy to fight with you. 

“He’s a jerk. What do you want?” Gwen asked for the third goddamn time.

Cap smiled, then tipped her head down to the person standing at her right flank.

“What do you think?” she asked. “She’s almost as paranoid as you are.”

The person was a guy. He work a similar suit to Cap’s battle gear, with a star on his shoulder and red gloves.

“This is Sam, too,” Cap introduced. “Or perhaps, Sam II, now that I think about it.”

“Sam-13,” Sam the For God’s Sake, Why is Everyone Named Sam corrected.

“We call him Falcon,” Cap said.

“We don’t call me Falcon, _you_ call me Falcon,” Falcon-Sam snapped.

Oh, Gwen saw what was happening here.

“I don’t need this,” Falcon said.

“Sam—” Cap started.

“No. I don’t need this. Director Carter said to stay out of the way. That was an order,” Falcon huffed, crossing his arms.

Gwen snickered.

Falcon glared at her.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

“You take orders,” Gwen giggled.

His offense was sky-high.

“_You’d_ do better to take orders,” he jabbed. “You’re just some loose cannon, run-of-the-mill vigilante. It’s no wonder you’re just out here making a mess of things.”

Gwen giggled harder.

“I’ve never licked a boot before,” she goaded. “What’s it taste like?”

Falcon’s eyes could not possibly go any wider with fury.

Cap laughed and he jerked her way in shock.

“We should turn her in,” he said. Cap collected herself and cleared her throat.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think so.”

“She’s a vigilante!”

“And?”

“She’s—it’s—what do you mean, ‘and??’”

Oh, this kid was in for a rude awakening.

“I mean that Spiderwoman here has a healthy disrespect for the rules. Something which you have both too much and too little of, kiddo. Maybe you two could go have a chat. There aren’t that many young people doing what both of you are. Might be nice to talk to someone who gets it for once, don’t you think?”

She couldn’t know that Gwen had plenty of people in her life who just got it. They just lived in other dimensions. Still though, this was technically a potential friend-making situation Cap had set up here and Bitsy _had_ said to just tag along and see what happens.

So who could it hurt?

Falcon seemed like he’d be fun to poke at, if nothing else.

“I’m down, Cap,” Gwen said brightly. “We can go throw rocks off the empire state building for the night. It’ll be fun.”

Falcon was disgusted. Gwen leaned into his space a little. He leaned back into Cap’s.

“Director Carter said—” he started.

“Director Carter told me to mentor you,” Cap interrupted. “Director Carter told me to do whatever is necessary to socialize you. Life isn’t all guns and birds, Sam. There are people in the world, too. Go. Follow Spiderwoman for the night. Whatever she says, you do. Wherever she goes, you go. That’s an order.”

Falcon growled. Gwen beamed at him.

“I hate this,” Falcon complained the second Cap left the two of them on their own. “And I hate you.”

Gwen snickered.

“You’re grumpy,” she said.

“This isn’t funny,” Falcon barked at her. “It’s stupid. I’m not a person. I’ll never be a person. I don’t know why everyone’s so hellbent in making me pretend to be a person.”

Gwen shrugged.

“That’s tough, buddy,” she said. “But I don’t care. You heard the lady. I’m in charge.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ooooh, I dunno, you’re a little young for me. And I dunno, a little too…male.”

“What??” Falcon startled back. “What, no. No. NO. Not like that. What? NO. Why would you even—”

Lol. Weird kid here.

“It’s a joke,” she said.

“It’s not funny,” Falcon jabbed back immediately.

“Well, not with that attitude,” Gwen said. “Relax. I’m Spiderwoman, not Cap. My type take a looser approach to things. So what do you want to do first, huh?”

Falcon stared at her.

“What do you mean? You’re in charge,” he said. “Cap said so.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Gwen said, “Which is why I’m asking you. What do you want to do first?”

This kid was broken. His brain had short-circuited or something and he was taking an age and a half to respond.

“You do want to do things, right?” Gwen asked.

Falcon’s processor kicked back on.

“Duh,” he said. “Of course I do.”

“Okay, so what do you want to do?”

“I want to kill HYDRA agents.”

“Besides that.”

“Why’d you even ask me if you were gonna ignore it?”

Man, Cap wasn’t kidding. This guy was in need of some serious socialization.

“Because,” she said slowly, “HYDRA isn’t my bag. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Pick something or someone else.”

Falcon blinked. He didn’t get it.

Aigh.

Boys.

“Okay, how about this,” Gwen negotiated, “I have a chaos element that will pick something for us. That way neither of us know what’s happening, and we’re both suffering equally. Is that fair?”

She continued to receive blank face.

“What’s a chaos element?” Falcon asked her.

“GENGAR.”

Falcon stared at Gwen like she’d just locked them into a room of alligators.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded.

“That’s a Sam,” she explained.

“Gen. Gar,” Sam said urgently, holding a crumpled piece of computer paper up as high as he could in Falcon’s face.

Dad had evidently run out and picked up some crayons before Gwen had come home for a brief experiment in kidnapping. Sam was wearing a neon orange puffy vest that was about two sizes too big for him, too. Gwen suspected Dad could not resist buying tiny person clothes while he was out getting the crayons. He was a softie like that.

“No, I’m a Sam. I am an expert on Sams. This is not a Sam,” Falcon said, edging away from Sammy’s paper shaking.

“He’s just as much of a Sam as you are,” Gwen scolded.

“He is obviously _half_ as much of a Sam as I am,” Falcon scowled down at Sammy’s now forlorn puppy eyes.

Sam huffed and went over to show Gwen his picture.

“Very nice,” she said. “Super purple. Just like the one on the phone.”

Sam lit up like Christmas and crammed this paper into her hands as a gift.

“Oh, wow. Thank you,” she said. She looked up to see Falcon gaping at her.

Sam noticed and wrinkled his nose his way in the most adorable imitation of Murderdock and Elektra’s matching snarling faces.

“Wuh-oh,” Gwen said. “You’ve been deemed wanting.”

Falcon reared back in offense.

“By who? For what?” he demanded.

Sam wrapped his arms around Gwen’s hip and scowled harder.

“By the chaos element,” Gwen said.

Sam, possibly out of revenge on the Falcon, told Gwen in very good English that he wanted to go find sensei. He’d made her a comic book. He wanted Gwen to look at the comic book and read it out loud. Gwen handed the task off to Falcon.

He refused it.

Sam mugged at him hardcore until Gwen reminded him that she was in charge. Cap said so.

“Yeah, you. Not some pipsqueak who can’t even color in the lines,” Falcon spat.

Sam looked like he wanted to bite him. Gwen offered him her hands to distract himself with before he did exactly that, and he took the opportunity and buried himself in her coat.

“I’m in charge and I say we’re following Sam’s lead,” Gwen said. “So we’re following Sam’s lead. Read the book.”

“I can’t, even if I wanted to,” Falcon huffed. “I mean, look at it. It doesn’t even have words.”

Dude. It had words. That was just rude.

“Those are words,” Gwen said, pointing. “Read them.”

“These aren’t words,” Falcon groused. “These are just letters. Shit letters.”

“He’s six, man. And he speaks more languages than you, so pipe down and read the fucking book, alright? This isn’t hard.”

“You don’t know that.”

Dear _god_, this dude was stubborn.

“Sammy, he’s mean isn’t he?” Gwen asked the top of Sam’s head. She got a nod. She gave Falcon a strong look. “Read. The damn. Book,” she threatened, widening her eyes at the same time. “Or I’ll show you what superstrength feels like. Capeesh?”

Falcon rattled with irritation.

“Fine,” he huffed. He squinted at the page Sam had stapled on top of the others. “The ud—ud? Ad? Adventures of DD.”

Sam wriggled out from Gwen’s coat beaming and in a hurry. He came over to grab at Falcon’s hands and make him stoop so that Sam could help him read the book.

Falcon was exhausted by the end of the book and it really did things for making him less bothersome, in Gwen’s personal opinion anyways.

“Was that so hard?” she asked sweetly.

“Can I leave yet?” the guy asked back, dazed.

“No,” Sam said. “We are finding sensei.”

“You heard the man,” Gwen said. “We’ve gotta go find sensei.”

She followed Sam’s tugging and looked back over her shoulder.

“Be careful, your face might get stuck like that,” she said.

“Sensei,” Sammy hummed, swinging Gwen’s hand back and forth as they walked. Gwen tried to get him to hold Falcon’s but Sammy just about hissed.

“Who’s sensei?” Falcon asked, wisely keeping his distance on Sam’s other side.

“DD,” Sam said without missing a beat.

Falcon watched him a bit, then gave Gwen an open questioning look.

“You don’t know DD?” she asked. “You know, the DD in the book you just read?”

“I do,” Falcon said defensively.

“You don’t,” Gwen said.

“No, I _do_. I was just testing you.”

Uh-huh. Sure.

“Daredevil,” Gwen said.

Falcon stopped walking and then had to hop to it to catch up.

“Like, _the_ Daredevil?” he asked.

“No, the fake one—yes, _the _Daredevil,” Gwen scolded.

Falcon made a sound of disgust.

“She took on some random baby as her apprentice?” he asked.

Sam froze and whipped his head over his shoulder so fast even Gwen winced. This kid’s evil eye was the stuff of nightmares.

“Not a baby,” he said ominously.

Even Falcon knew better to fuck with that.

“Kid,” he amended. “Kid, then. She took on some random kid as her apprentice?”

Sam let that slide but made it very clear that he was being benevolent in doing so. He went back to watching the sidewalk for puddles to step in.

“Why not?” Gwen said. “He’s just as good as anyone.”

“Oh, I dunno, you want me to start with the top forty reasons or the top ten?”

“Don’t be a Debbie Downer,” Gwen said. “_You’re_ an apprentice, too, you know. You’re no better than Sammy.”

Falcon squawked.

“I am so,” he said.

“Are not,” Gwen said.

“Excuse you? I’m a clone of _the_ Captain America. I’m a trained soldier. I can—”

“Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I don’t care. Sammy helps DD take down drug and weapon and human trafficking circles. What do _you _do for humanity, huh?”

Falcon was taken aback by the question. He didn’t answer right away.

“I,” he said, just before they crossed the boundary into Hell’s Kitchen. “I—I fight HYDRA. That’s—they’re. They’re terrorists. Someone has to fight them.”

Gwen let go of Sam’s hand to let him go do the thing he did best: rummaging around alleys.

“Yeah,” she said, “That’s fine, but why do _you_ do it?”

Falcon’s eyebrows stayed low and he flicked his eyes away from her.

“Because I’ve been made to,” he said. “That’s my purpose. That’s why I’m here at all.”

Gwen felt sorry for him.

Sam wasn’t a great tracker, not yet anyways. He only good at finding handfuls of dirty leaves. He offered these to Gwen and made sad sounds at his lack of sensei-finding.

She took pity on him.

“Maybe, if you ask nicely, Falcon can help you track,” she said. “I bet he’s very good at it.”

They both stared pointedly at the guy. He flexed his hands nervously.

“I _guess_,” he relented. “It’ll probably be faster than whatever you’ve got anyways.”

Sam looked up at Gwen. She bounced her eyebrows at him to widen her suit eyes.

“You gotta ask nicely,” she said.

Sam looked back at Falcon.

“Please?” he said. “Help?”

Gwen waited. If Falcon refused, she’d pound him into the pavement. He must have caught the threat because he sighed hard enough to make his shoulders fall.

“Alright, fine,” he said. “What’s she look like?”

“Pidgey,” Sam called the mechanical bird which Falcon called down to him.

“No, Red Wing,” he corrected.

“Pidgey,” Sam insisted. “Red Pidgey.”

“No. Red Wing.”

“_Pidgey_.”

“Why is he like this?” Falcon pleaded with Gwen.

Gwen shrugged.

“It’s part of his charm,” she said. “You guys have that in common.”

Falcon’s bird was some kind of drone device. He could program it. He could use it to expand his sights and to fire ammunition. He didn’t often use it for tracking people, especially not devils.

He had no experience tracking devils.

Sam was not impressed. He didn’t understand why Falcon needed all this detail about his teacher. For his purposes, ‘tall, long hair, mask’ was _more_ than enough information. For Red Wing, which viewed things from the top down, this was not enough.

Falcon did manage, however, to track down someone wearing a mask, running around the Kitchen, which was good. Until it wasn’t.

Murderdock was not impressed with this weird fucking bird dive-bombing him in the middle of the night.

He slammed his makeshift-staff into the bird like he was going for a homer. Falcon was horrified. Sam was triumphant.

Gwen wanted to know why Murderdock was out running around with a mask on and no visible sword.

This information was not forthcoming. Even with Sammy latched around Murderdock’s waist, making every one of the happy Sammy-noises that Gwen had ever heard him make.

Murderdock swore at him in Japanese. Sam did not let go.

Gwen wondered if maybe this was how Sam had decided he was going to exact revenge on Murderdock for barging into the happy family arrangement he had between himself and Elektra. If it was, the kid was a fucking genius. If it wasn’t, he was still a fucking genius. Murderdock _hated_ being touched but, for whatever reason, seemed to refuse to take a swing at Sam. Possibly out of fear of the swift retribution Elektra would enact upon him if he did. Possibly because he had a grain of decency left in him.

Gwen would put her money on the former.

“SAMUEL.”

Ahhhhh. There was nothing more beautiful than Murderdock’s frustration.

“I am going to _skin_ you, boy.”

Falcon was horrified, as well he should have been. Gwen grabbed him before he jumped into the fray and came out a limb short.

“He’s fine,” she said.

“He’s not fine, that guy’s gonna kill him,” Falcon gasped.

“No, he’s not.”

Murderdock wouldn’t. Not when there was still a chance that he could convert Sam to be _his_ apprentice as opposed to Elektra’s.

“Samuel-_kun_,” Murderdock growled. Then paused. “What is this?” He poked at the puffy vest.

“Coat!” Sam told him proudly.

The two stopped struggling.

“Coat?” Murderdock repeated.

“Mm.”

“From where? From who? Elektra? Did Elek—”

“Matthew—JESUS. What’s the matter with you?”

Gwen was adding ‘surprise’ to the list of things that she needed to employ on Murderdock. He did not like it. There was a chance that only Elektra was fast enough to escape that knee-jerk staff throw.

Murderdock, upon realizing that it was her, lowered the staff and groaned up to the sky through the _oni_ mask he had on.

Elektra let him suffer alone.

“Sammy! Honey, what’re you doing out here?” She gushed. “Oh? What’s this? Are we dressing up as traffic cones now?”

She ignored Murderdock’s grumbling and noticed Gwen.

She cocked her head in question, then swayed her mask towards Falcon. He winced at the tusks.

“Well, well, well,” Elektra said. “What have we here?” She reached back and waved at Murderdock. “Do you see this, Red?” she asked.

Murderdock dropped the staff to hold both of his hands to his—god, what the hell had happened to his hands? The skin on them was ripped right through. What the hell were these two doing? They were matching that night, which Gwen was learning was the first sign of a rough night for this part of the city. Murderdock usually avoided Elektra when she popped in and out of town, as far as Gwen could tell, but every now and then, she’d hold out a mask to him—a red tusked one like hers or a piece of black fabric—and before anyone knew it, there would be two devils slinking around Hell’s Kitchen—only ever Hell’s Kitchen. Never anywhere else in the city would both devils appear.

Hm.

Gwen made a mental note to go ask Mr. Nelson some rather pointed questions at the next opportunity.

“I don’t see shit,” Murderdock’s slightly muffled voice said.

“It’s a wee flag,” Elektra cooed.

“Explain.”

“Red, white and blue and—”

“Gun powder. Oil. Bullets.”

Elektra coiled back like a cobra. She placed a delicate hand on her breast.

“Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s a mini Captain America,” she said.

Falcon was unnerved by this act. For all his talk, Gwen thought that he really wasn’t too well-versed in the real world. It wasn’t enough to set up a shot or know how to use a drone here.

This was the sticky business. The kind you could plunge your hands in and keep digging for the whole of your life without making so much as a scratch on the surface of anything or anyone.

“He’s with me,” Gwen said.

Elektra’s mask turned her way slightly.

“Oh, I see,” she said, easing back almost immediately. “A friend?”

“Yes,” Gwen said before Murderdock started to get any ideas.

Elektra made a sound of interest. Sam abandoned Murderdock in favor of her. She knelt down to affectionately press their foreheads together, even without taking off her mask.

“You’re not staying out are you?” she asked, sweeping Sam up into her arms. He allowed this, this time. Gwen saw why a moment later when she saw him take a swipe at one of the strips of fabric holding Murderdock’s mask in place.

“No, we’re heading back now,” Gwen said. “Are you almost done?”

Elektra’s mask deferred to Murderdock’s.

“An hour?” she asked him.

Murderdock shrugged. “Depends on how many. Two is more likely. We’ve still got one to flush out.”

Oh.

They were hunting.

That was what was going on here.

Yikes, yikes, yikes. Okay, Gwen was taking this group back east, ASAP.

“Here, I’ll take him. Just give me a ring when you’re done. I’ll meet you halfway,” Gwen promised.

“Thanks, boo-boo,” Elektra cooed. She set Sam back down. “Be good,” she told him.

“Oh,” Gwen remembered, “He made you a comic. It’s very good. We’ll hold onto it until you’re done.”

Elektra was tickled pink.

Murderdock was unphased. He stomped on the end of his staff and caught it when it came back up.

“Come on, I don’t got all night,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve got a suit to be in at 3.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Go on, I’ll catch up,” Elektra told him. She touched Sam’s vest, then dug through her pocket and handed Gwen a twenty. “Give that to your dad for me, would you?” She said. “I’ve been meaning to get him something winterproof, just haven’t had a chance to breathe. I’ll see you in a bit.” She paused and peered at Falcon. “It was nice meeting you, mini-Cap,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon.”

And with that, she left them, chasing Murderdock’s footsteps.

Sam waved after them.

“Okay,” Gwen said, “Did we find sensei?”

Sam beamed up at her.

“Are we done now?” Gwen asked him.

She got enthusiastic nodding in return. She looked over her shoulder at Falcon.

“You had enough?” she asked. “Do you feel socialized?”

He didn’t seem to be able to answer her.

Gwen dropped Falcon off with Cap first. Sam was cool with that. It meant that he got to see two of his favorite people in the same night.

Falcon stiffly thanked Gwen for the night under Cap’s pleased gaze.

“Same time next week?” Gwen asked him.

Abso-fucking-lutely not, his face said.

“Sure,” he creaked. “It was fun.”

Oho.

Yes.

Now _that _was what Gwen liked to hear.

“Thank you so much, Spiderwoman,” Cap said. “I really appreciate it. I hope he didn’t hold you back too much.”

“Don’t sweat it, Cap,” she said, “We had a grand ole time. I love not being arrested by national icons.”

Cap laughed.

Gwen grinned.

One at a time, she decided. She’d win these people over one at a time.

“Get home safe,” Cap said, turning around and herding her mentee.

“Good work, Sammy,” Gwen whispered when they got back to her house. He beamed at her.

“Next time, we’ll put him through some paces, and if he makes the cut, we’ll add him to the team, yeah?”

Sam didn’t understand at all, but he was excited about it.

“Gwen.”

Gwen looked up to see Dad standing there in sleep clothes with a foot a-tapping.

She glanced at the clock.

Whoops.

“Sammy missed DD,” she lied. “We had to go find her.”

Dad would not be moved.

“I _hate_ your vigilante friends,” he emphasized. Gwen gasped and hugged Sam close to her.

“You don’t hate Sammy, do you, Dad?”

Sam made big sad eyes.

Dad glared at the both of them.

Gotcha, old man.

“Put him to sleep.”

Ehehe. Will do.

“I hate your friends.”

Yeah, yeah. Sure. Whatever.

It had been ages since Gwen had had any to hate. So as far as she was concerned, this was a step forward.


End file.
